


Bells

by Bluewolf458



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Gen, The Sentinel Secret Santa 2016
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-14 01:17:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9150409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluewolf458/pseuds/Bluewolf458
Summary: Blair has never liked the sound of bells





	

 

Bells

by Bluewolf

Blair's first memory of bells dated from around the time he was four. Naomi had just moved in with Murray, and on the first Sunday they were there, Blair was awakened by a steady, monotonous, one-note 'dong... dong... dong...' coming, as he discovered later that day, from the church a couple of hundred yards away as it called its congregation to the early morning service.

He came to hate that bell during the three months they stayed there (and after they left, Naomi admitted to him that the sound of that once every five seconds or so bell was one of the things that had driven her away from the place, even though she was still fond of Murray).

His second memory of bells, about a year later, was still to some degree unpleasant because of the why of the bells. They were staying with Tony by then, and Tony had cats. Several cats. And they were hunters, so Tony had put bells on their collars to warn the birds. Some of the time, the warning worked, some of the time the bells didn't ring because the cat was moving so carefully, and the result was a dead bird.  Blair didn't dislike the cats, but he hated the way they hunted the small birds.

His next memory of bells was the school bell that called him in for lessons and told him when it was time to go home. He both liked and disliked that bell - he welcomed the call to lessons, and he was sorry when the school day came to an end, for he quickly discovered that he loved learning things. Naomi didn't always send him to school as she made her carefree way around the world - sometimes there wasn't a school of any kind where they stopped for a while - but when there was, Blair insisted that she let him go to school. Not because he had to, but because he wanted to. Because he liked it. She 'heard that', and eventually accepted without argument when he said he wanted to go to university, young though he still was.

Blair was eighteen before he became aware of the sound of bells again, and he added them fairly quickly to the (short) list of bells he didn't particularly like. Not that the sound was unpleasant - unlike the monotonous monotone dong... dong... dong of the church bell fourteen years earlier. It was just that the sound, although musical, was so repetitive...

Although grants and a scholarship covered many of his expenses and Naomi did give him a (small) allowance, he still found money tight and taking holiday jobs was the best way to provide a small boost to his income. And so, the December he was eighteen, he found himself a job in one of Cascade's malls as one of Santa's elves. 'Santa' (accompanied by half a dozen elves) arrived at the mall each morning in a wheeled sleigh drawn by a reindeer (hurriedly taken away by one of the elves, whose sole job it was to look after the animal, within a few minutes of their arrival - heaven forbid that the creature pooped in the mall! - then brought it back in the evening to take Santa away. Both reindeer and sleigh were decorated with bells and the animal moved fast enough that the bells rang cheerfully, warning everyone in the mall that something was coming.

Blair enjoyed working as a Christmas elf, and did it every December until eventually he met up with a sentinel, and found he no longer had the time free to do the job. He was sorry about that, though at the same time he wasn't sorry not to have to listen to the sound of sleigh bells every morning and evening.

And he made sure thereafter that when he went Christmas shopping it wasn't at a time when Santa was arriving - or leaving - in his sleigh.

 


End file.
